The EM Poll

Crossing the Finish Line

Feb 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Michael Cooper

           

Stuck in a rut during mixdown? Here are ten tips for reevaluating your work so that you can stay on track.

FIG. 3a: The Waves Q10 EQ plug-in is used to apply a shelving cut to low frequencies on an acoustic guitar track in order to make room for bass and kick in the mix.

That's a Switch

The use of alternate sets of reference monitors will preclude most EQ'ing mistakes that might otherwise prompt you to remix the same song again and again (assuming your room has been acoustically treated to have the flattest response possible). Switch between monitors whose different strengths aid in the accomplishment of various tasks. Don't rely on one set of monitors to do everything.

For instance, it makes no sense to apply a bottom-octave EQ boost or cut to kick and bass tracks while listening to speakers whose frequency response rolls off below, say, 60 Hz. If you do, you might end up with a mix that exhibits a boomy bottom end when played on full-range monitors. In this case, your bass-lean monitors have convinced you there was less bottom end on your mix than there actually was, prompting you to add more (or not carve away excess). Remixing to fix the bass imbalance will always be a hit-and-miss proposition until you work on monitors that let you accurately hear the effects of your EQ tweaks down low.

Few reference monitors exist that reveal all EQ and level adjustments optimally. For this reason, I frequently switch between alternate sets of monitors while mixing.

For example, when EQ'ing drums I'll listen to my D.A.S. Monitor-8 speakers — which offer excellent high-frequency extension — together with my Tannoy PS-88 subwoofer (a discontinued model). With this combination of monitors, I can hear at once all of the high frequencies in the cymbals' range and all of the lows the kick and toms might produce. I'll switch to my midrangy Yamaha NS-10M studio monitors (also discontinued) when applying EQ to vocals, guitars, and fiddle. The Avant Electronics Avantone MixCubes (see Fig. 2) are my preferred reference for confirming that the relative levels of lead and background vocals and electric guitars are in good balance with one another. Furthermore, I'll alternately listen to the entire mix on all three systems (as well as the Monitor-8s without the sub) before “printing” it to confirm that it sounds great on a wide variety of speakers.

All Together Now

I never work on EQ settings for soloed tracks for very long. Generally speaking, it's important to apply EQ to a track while listening to it in context; that is, along with all the other tracks that should be playing during that part of the song. A guitar part, for instance, might have plenty of presence when soloed but sound murky once it's competing with the bass and piano. Nobody who buys the record will ever hear the guitar soloed throughout the song, so why EQ it to sound right in isolation?

To be sure, it's sometimes helpful to use the solo button to assess those aspects of the untreated track that you're having trouble hearing in context. You can even make coarse EQ adjustments to the track while soloed, to get its sound in the ballpark. But quickly bring in other tracks to hear what the combined effect will sound like, before you take things too far. Otherwise, you'll probably end up redoing all of those EQ settings.

FIG. 3b: The low-shelving band is bypassed on the acoustic guitar track, restoring its bass frequencies, when drums and bass temporarily drop out of the mix. FIG. 4: A brickwall limiter adds distortion to a track when it squares off the top of its waveform on peaks.

While a given track needs to sound right in the context of the entire mix, sometimes it helps to break down a few instruments into a subgroup to shape a composite sound. For example, where the guitar, piano, and fiddle all play the same melodic hook (perhaps in different octaves), you might want to solo all three instruments in order to work on the EQ for each in turn. Listening thus will also help you set relative levels within the subgroup. Once you've attained a dynamite submix, pop the channel group back into the full mix and make any additional tweaks that are needed in that context. You'll probably find this technique to be a lot less confusing and more efficient than immediately trying to EQ a single track with all the other tracks also playing.

Till Death Do Us Part

Once you've got the EQ for a track sounding great in one part of the song, don't feel like you're married to it for the rest of the song. A great mix often requires that EQ settings be changed — sometimes drastically — on one or more tracks in different sections of the song.

For instance, an acoustic guitar that starts out a song alone might require that no bass frequencies be rolled off, in order for the mix to sound warm and full right from the get-go. But once the bass and drums come in, that bottom end on the acoustic guitar track may no longer be needed. In fact, it could be stepping on the bass and making it sound less tight and clear. In this case, roll off the bottom end as needed on the acoustic guitar to give the bass guitar its own frequency range to project itself in (see Fig. 3a). Then, if the acoustic guitar takes the spotlight again in a breakdown later in the song, restore its bottom end as needed so that it doesn't sound too thin in isolation (see Fig. 3b).

Some tracks might need level changes instead of EQ adjustments in certain sections of a mix. For example, the cymbals or hi-hat may need boosting or attenuation in some spots, even while the traps' faders stay static.

Do whatever it takes to make the mix sound great from moment to moment, even if that means making dozens of EQ and fader moves by the time the song ends. While this will take time to execute, you're more likely to be satisfied with the end result. And you won't waste time tweaking and retweaking elusive static settings that you're never quite happy with — another recipe for endless mixdown sessions.

Listen. Don't Listen!

How many times have you declared a mix was finished, only to discover a few days later that a key part was buried? Especially in productions having large track counts, it's easy to overlook an important detail here and there. To help prevent such oversights from occurring, I use a technique I call “selective listening.”

First, I'll selectively listen to only the lead and background vocals while the mix plays back. Yes, I'm hearing the other tracks play, too, but I'm concentrating on how every lyric of the lead vocal sits in the mix and how the lead and background vocals work together. Are any lyrics unclear? Does the vocal dip in level or pop out too much at any time? Does the lead vocal get too edgy or muddy at any point in the song? Do the background vocals overwhelm the lead vocal at any point or fail to cut through the mix? I'll concentrate on these aspects of the mix while listening to each set of my reference monitors in turn, making sure no monitors reveal any problems.

Once I've vetted the lead and background vocals' treatments throughout the mix, I'll do another set of selective-listening passes while concentrating on only the instrument tracks (again, using alternate sets of monitors on each listening pass). Are the bass and drums punchy enough? Did I goose all the key parts I wanted to? Do the cymbals get too loud and shrill during the choruses, or does the hi-hat and side stick get too soft on the verses? Did I succeed in attaining a nice composite blend of tracks on shared melodic phrases? How are the overall spectral balance and dynamics? Allowing myself to ignore the previously vetted vocal tracks lets me hear everything else all the more clearly and catch any problems or oversights that might otherwise have gotten past me. The result is that I need to remix a lot less often.